


Fix

by virtueofvice



Category: Silent Hill
Genre: Angst, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Rape/Non-con Elements, Substance Abuse, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:59:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 10,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueofvice/pseuds/virtueofvice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James and Heather both deal with the aftermath of Silent Hill in their own ways - an inelegant dance of symbiosis and mutually assured destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to playlist here: http://8tracks.com/virtueofvice/fix

It would have made sense for him to turn his back on the town, to run for the furthest edge of the map and never look back. Alessa was not a kind soul but noble in her own right; with the willful tenacity of the child she had once and forever been, she adhered firmly to the concept of fairness - wrongdoers were punished, while those that pleased her were free to go. The fact that she refused to be satisfied did not enter into the equation. 

So James turned his back on the steep winding road into town, the muffler on his '86 blue Camaro rattling ominously as if some mischievous child had dropped stones into it - one last small misfortune to harry him as he fled this town of missed fortunes. At the thought of being tripped up, here at the edge of escape, sucked back into the hell that still nipped at his heels... He choked back a sob, blond hair dirty and lank with sweat, blood, and ash; hanging in his eyes as he clamped down on the steering wheel with white knuckles and toed the accelerator closer to the floor. 

It was through the irrational machinations of fate that he survived the drive to Brahms, checking himself into an unscrupulous motel and dragging his exhausted body into the shower. As rivulets of scalding hot water poured from the showerhead, they painted pink streaks through the grime on his pale skin; but he stared numbly at the wall, blue eyes blank and distant as a shellshock victim. 

The motel was too inconsequential and James' luck (or karma) too poor to merit the presence of a minibar, so he stalked across the parking lot beneath flickering sodium arcs to the dive that welcomed him with neon benevolence. No strippers here, he noted with a shudder of visceral relief; just shot after shot of cheap, greasy whiskey that burned like diesel and smelled vaguely of rust - or perhaps that was just the scent of old blood lingering in his nose. 

He did not sleep that night so much as he surrendered to the cloying black oblivion of alcohol. It was the first of many such nights, when he allowed control over his bodily functions to be wrested from him by a bottle. He needed it, because the clinging, gibbering terror still very present at the back of his shattered mind was louder in moments of sobriety. In the bright sunlight, going about daily errands, it was bearable. When night fell, the nightmares came with it.


	2. Chapter 2

It would have made sense for her to turn her back on the town, to run for the furthest edge of the map and never look back. Then again, little in Heather Mason's life made sense; now or ever. There were no friends or allies; a lifetime on the run had ensured this desolate outcome. Her father, dead. She had never had a mother - or, if she had, then reconciliation was out of the question - Alessa was not the mothering type. The thought curved her pale pink lips in a wry smirk; and the haunted eyes above the smile wondered (not for the first time) if she were not totally insane. 

She paced the alley beside the convenience store, checking the scuffed screen on her digital watch. Just over a year since she had walked away from Silent Hill, but she hadn't made it past Brahms. She'd tried to leave, of course - Heather was stubborn and perhaps slightly mad, but not a glutton for punishment. It had proved impossible - nothing so terrifying as the gaping chasm of collapsed roads and vanished bridges that surrounded Silent Hill, but effective nonetheless. The overpowering migraine and nausea that had forced her to remove herself from the Greyhound before it left the town limits. The out-of-season blizzard that had stalemated her hitchhiking plans. It seemed that some great invisible force pinned her down like a needle through a butterfly, ensuring that she stayed so close to Silent Hill that on a clear evening she could see the fog enshrouding it. 

It was an uncomfortable truce - but she was invisible in Brahms. People were too tied up in the throes of their own wretchedly mundane humanity to even take notice of her, which suited her perfectly. The little mountain hamlet had one police car, a handful of traffic lights that seemed never to operate in tandem. It was small enough that she could walk from one edge to another in the space of an afternoon. She nested in a small room above a dive bar, and made ends meet waiting tables - though with her _medicine_ , the distance between the ends was ever widening. 

And it was the medicine man she was waiting for, arms crossed tight over the buttoned-up front of her uniform as she paced and shivered in the unseasonably brisk night. If she'd had a fix the cold couldn't bother her - nothing could bother her, not even the whispering voices and phantom hands grasping her throat, rifling in her guts as she slept. With a stamp or two in her pocket, nothing could touch her. But the man was late, and a different sort of nothing was starting to touch her _hard_ \- the yawning black emptiness of horror in the back of her mind. 

Finally he swung around the corner, broad shoulders belied by the easy lope of his long stride. Black motorcycle boots clicked dully against the pavement, a green army jacket zipped up to the collar doing little to block the wind and errant snowflakes that ruffled his blond hair. Heather noted, not for the first time, that the man was damned attractive - or would have been, if it weren't for the eyes. Steel blue eyes, deep-set and pretty - and dead. Cold as the bottom of Lake Toluca, empty as a fresh grave. It was as if the man had gotten out of bed one morning and left his soul behind. 

All this was reflected upon in the space of seconds, her feverish mind flicking through the thoughts like photos in an album before she took two long strides and met him. One thin white finger flew out, jabbing him in the chest as she glared up at him. "You're fucking late, man; I needed my shit an hour ago."

"Relax, kid." He put two firm hands on her shoulders, pushing her back a step. The man demanded his space. He was not someone that inspired feelings of closeness. Nevertheless, he was the most important person in Heather's social circle; by virtue of the two small blue packets he placed in her hand. "Thirty." He commanded in a flat voice that invited no debate. 

"What?" Heather demanded. A heaviness muffled all sound, the sensation of water closing over her head and cutting off air. "I only have twenty. It's always twenty."

He shrugged, moving to retrieve one of the packets from her dumbly outstretched hand, fingers splayed in unnatural grace like a mannequin. Like a trap, her fingers closed and she danced away. 

"Wait, wait." She shook her head to clear it. One bag was no good, she needed two if she intended to sleep and to function at work in the morning. Damn it, waiting tables wasn't going to cut it for much longer. She hissed through her teeth, staring at the pavement with clenched jaw, before rearranging her features and raising her gaze again. She stepped closer to the man, deliberately violating the boundary he had set, keeping the hand holding the drug behind her back like a child, while the other traced up his lapel. She raised her big dark eyes to his, lips slightly parted in a breathless pout - the expression, at least, was genuine. The needle was a lover she visited nightly, and the thought of how close she was to her next hit made her body vibrate with anticipation. "Listen. I only have twenty. I didn't know the price went up. If you let me have it... I'll make it up to you."

The darkness of her eyes, such a deep brown they were almost black, seemed to swallow him up. In an instant they were transformed from the glimmering gaze of a young woman to the rich, brown earth of a grave with his name on it. An expression of horror flickering across his face, breaking the carefully constructed facade of impassivity, James pushed the girl away from him and took a step back. "You..." _You've been there. You've been there!_

"Keep it. Just keep it." He muttered, turned on his heel and stalked out of the alley. 

Heather stared at his retreating form as it disappeared into the swirling snow, then down at the little blue blessings in her hand. Not believing her luck, she clattered up the fire escape and entered her room through the window, neatly bypassing the bar patrons and their groping hands. 

Gritting her teeth to control the shaking of her hands, she lit a candle and prepared the dosage. The needle glinted dully in wan candlelight as she found her vein effortlessly and pressed it home. In a rushing flood of endorphins, she reclined back on the unmade bed, heroin kissing her senses like an absentee lover, and allowed herself to be carried into Elysium.


	3. Chapter 3

On a night like the freezing dark echo of a brass bell, James locked his apartment and walked, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched, down the sidewalk under the halfhearted orange glow of streetlamps. The medicine man, closing up shop for the evening; he crumpled the small paper bag which had contained his livelihood, divided precisely into small blue squares. A casual toss into a waiting garbage can belied the tingling between his shoulderblades, the constant nagging sensation of being watched that was only accentuated by the absence of alcohol from his system. The dive bar that had welcomed him to Brahms had noted his absence as of late; he had been holed up in his apartment with bottles of his own since his last encounter with Heather. There had been rumors of the old owner's death, and the grand (for Brahms) plans of the new management. Boredom more than curiosity drove him to the battered steel door and sickly incandescent bulbs he knew so well; he assumed that despite the best-laid plans of mice and men, the miserable little pisshole would remain more or less the same until its inevitable demise. 

His surprise and terror, therefore, were a violent shock when he stepped through the familiar door and into Heaven's Night.

_What? No! No-_

The endless monotony and drunken dreams of the last two years narrowed to a pinprick and vanished, and suddenly he was in the town again, surrounded by fog and monsters and the screeching insistence of his own guilt. The world spun, and he dropped into a barstool; lowering his head into shaking palms.

No, not Heaven's Night. The stage was different, centered before the bar rather than off to the side. The neon lights, as proud of their garish silhouettes as Renaissance masters, were red and gold rather than magenta. He sucked in a shuddering breath, forcing his lungs to accept oxygen along with the realization that the air was not tainted with rust and despair. The new managers had changed the bar into a strip club. That was all. 

He sighed, one hand still clenching the edge of the bar as he raised two fingers for a double-shot of whiskey. As the rotgut burned its way down his throat and settled familiarly into his abdomen, he felt revived enough to retrieve a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket and light it up. The match popped against the rough wood of the bar and a yellow flare lit up faded blue eyes framed by small crow's feet. The James of the past would never have smoked. It was unhealthy. The James of the present viewed cancer as a far gentler way to die than any he had yet experienced. 

Another shot appeared before him as the cigarette burned low, and he swallowed it with a rapid motion and a grimace. Putting out the smoke, he slid the glass forward again and gestured for a refill. For half a heartbeat he had contemplated leaving - the shock had left his heart pounding, the nasty metallic taste of anxiety and fear in his mouth - but the mouthwatering allure of cheap oblivion held him in place. 

The lights dimmed and he jerked, almost knocking over the heavy shotglass as his body tensed in preparation to bolt. He looked wildly around, expecting the sound of sirens to pierce the air; and noted that the few other patrons were staring blandly at the stage and appeared to have paid the change no mind. When the glare of the spotlight blinked on with an electric hiss and clatter, he understood - the new stripper was about to make her appearance. Merely that. 

Heaving a sigh, he turned away to nurse his whiskey. The draw of this place had never been its women. Perhaps it was time to find another bar. 

The music started; an angry, gritty tune that somehow still managed to convey the loneliness and desolation of innocence lost too young. Or perhaps he was just drunk. Almost against his will, his eyes were dragged to the stage - only to lock with the deep brown gaze of his best customer. 

_Well, fuck._


	4. Chapter 4

Heather fidgeted behind the curtain, waiting for the hard rock cue to take her place on stage. Showing her body had never come naturally, and the green frayed edges of her nerves were raw and sensitive. Casting aside the ash blonde of her disguise, she had returned her hair to its original glossy black. What could they do to her that hadn't already been done? Taking her shift drink in the form of a shot to the head, she licked droplets of vodka from the sheen of her lip gloss and fidgeted in her shoes. Slim and willowy, she looked younger than her nineteen years, spindly black kitten heels drawing attention to her long white legs; forcing her back to arch so pert little breasts were on display in the tiny black bikini. Fishnet gloves hid the bruising on her inner arms, and dark eye makeup turned sleepless shadows into sultry invitation as she stepped through the curtain and into the light. 

Exotic dancing was not something that came naturally to her - lying, on the other hand, was second nature. She knew how to play a role when one was expected of her, and the talent served her admirably in this venue. Stretching catlike across the stage, she surveyed the audience through downturned lashes; the demure sensuality of her gaze conveying the presence of both virgin and whore. Hooking one leg around the pole, she curved her spine backward, and it was whilst hanging upside-down that her eyes met the relentless blue of the medicine man's. 

Spinning to face the curtain, she offered the bar patrons a sweet, heart-shaped vantage point as she bent to retrieve the bills that had been sacrificed to her. _Why is he here?_ But of course it didn't matter. It was a small town, and she saw him almost daily - just never from this vantage point. The kittenish smile was back, firmly stitched in place, as she swung into remainder of her set. Despite the wintry temperatures outside, a sheen of sweat began to glisten on her skin beneath the glare of the spotlight. She paid little thought to anything but focus on her movements for the remainder of the set, fighting off the dull but rising panic of the stagefright that little Cheryl had once had. 

Retrieving a few stray bills as the music went silent, she gave a charming little wave and rushed offstage before making eye contact with her dealer again. The tiny dancer tugged on jeans and a black bomber jacket, shivering in the dim oily light of the dressing room. Still in her heels, she clicked across the parking lot, dim streetlamps glinting green in her hair and turning her skin an unhealthy hue. Humming halfheartedly to ward off the dark, she lit a cigarette and turned into the alley that supplied her habit and would take her home. The narrow space, asphalt and snow beneath rearing brick walls and rusted ladders, was as familiar as her own bedroom. She was almost entirely unaware of her surroundings until strong hands gripped her shoulders and slammed her back into the wall of the adjoining building.


	5. Chapter 5

Despite the bitter January cold snap that had gripped Brahms for the last week, James felt feverishly hot. The whiskey hummed through his veins, training his eyes on the girl though he'd convinced himself he wanted nothing more than to look away. 

She was like nothing he'd ever seen before - jet black hair swallowing the light, eyes so dark they looked like holes tunneled away into nothing. She was too thin, too pale, and at least ten years too young for him to touch. He knew she was hooked tight on heroin, having supplied her with the drug for almost a year now. But watching her on stage was like cracking the seal on a bottle of good bourbon - his mouth watered, hands clenching into fists, chest tight with shallow breaths. 

The _want_ swept over him like fire; and then he remembered her eyes.

Big, dark eyes; haunted and dead - just like his.

_You've been there._

It was a trick. James Sunderland never wanted what was good for him. The one ray of light he'd ever had, he'd extinguished himself. The rest was death, and punishment, and endless screaming silence. The town. She'd come from Silent Hill. 

Dropping an indiscriminate wad of cash on the counter, he leapt from the barstool as if it had burned him and stormed outside, determined to find her - whoever, _whatever_ she was... Suspicion and desire warred within him, twisting dark coils of ugly resentment and fear that gripped his gut and squeezed when she rounded the corner. Instantly he pounced, taking hold of fragile shoulders in a grip that bruised, and throwing her back against the wall of the bar. 

"Who sent you?" He snarled, scent of whisky evident on the puff of fog that escaped his lips into the chill night. "What do you want from me?"

"Jesus!" Heather shrieked, thin white hands slapping ineffectually at the broad chest of the man who held her. She could smell whiskey and cigarettes on his breath, and imagined it was a patron who had grown overzealous in his affections. She raised her sharp kitten heel, about to bring it down on the instep of her assailant, and then met his eyes.

"It's you!" She hissed, betrayal shuddering through her with surprising force. Brahms was a miserable little hellhole on the edge of a truer hell, she would have expected this level of crazy from virtually any of its citizens - any, that is, except the medicine man. Here was this paragon of immovable restraint, who held her life in the tight grip of a tourniquet, coming undone over a little girl in a sexy costume.

Although... His words came back to her, echoing strangely in the alley dark as if they were reading from different scripts. _"Who sent you? What do you want from me?"_ He sounded desperate, and furious; but not crazy. A man more interested in answers than in what she'd hidden beneath her coat. A little frown creased her brows, highlighting for a moment the smattering of freckles across her nose. Though that brand of panic and rage was familiar - had she not felt it thrumming through her own veins? - she had no idea how to answer his questions. She decided to start with the easiest.

"Um. A fix would be good. I have cash."

He thrust her away from him with a curse. "To hell with your fix," he hissed at her, eyes flashing like a caged animal. "Where did you come from?" 

_Hell._ Her shoulders slumped, defeated at the impossibility of the situation. "Just a town. Small, like this one. Same as anybody; I guess." _I came from Hell._ "Look, I don't know what's wrong with you, but if I could just get my shit-"

As if on cue, a fire truck lumbered by. Typically Brahms was much too small to enjoy any of the weeknight sounds of larger cities - gunshots, engines backfiring, brakes squealing, the urban nocturne in all its myriad forms. But this red engine was on loan for a neighboring town, accommodating the tendency of outdated home heating systems to catch fire in the winter. Harmless, really. But as it rolled by, the overenthusiastic young driver switched on the siren, and shrill tones split the quiet blackness of the night.


	6. Chapter 6

Watching the girl cringe, clamping her hands over her ears, James realized that the sirens splitting his skull were audible to others as well - therefore likely real. He saw the red spiraling flash of the fire truck's lights as it motored past the alley, and tasted blood in his mouth as the panic receded enough for him to catch his breath. His heart hammered against his ribs like an animal trying to escape, and he braced one hand against the wall, the other pawing for his cigarettes, flask; anything that would numb the searing terror still clenching his teeth shut over a choking scream caught in his throat. 

Forcing a deep breath first in, then out through flared nostrils; he lit a cigarette and glared down at the petite creature decorating the asphalt at his feet. She had dropped to a squat, narrow haunches folded over spike heels. After an extended pause, during which he pondered the ethical and logistical quandary of burning down a firehouse ( _bastard sirens_ ), he extended the battered pack to the girl on the ground and she took one gratefully. He lit it for her from his own brass lighter, noting the trembling of her hands. She was probably jonesing, but even veteran junkies didn't just drop in the street at the sound of a siren. She had been genuinely terrified; he'd watched the pupils of her eyes dilate in terror like a spooked horse, swallowing up her iris till they were like black pits.

He glared at her, as if her anxiety was a personal attack. Heather shifted uncomfortably, taking a hard drag of the cigarette as she avoided his eyes. "I'm Heather." She informed the pavement. 

Since the pavement seemed uninterested, he replied - "James." She may have heard his name before, in the sleeping circles they both traveled; but he had never offered it. 

He finished his cigarette quietly, staring off into the night, skin still prickling warily. Taking a moment to set aside the immediate panic of his recognition - he _knew_ she'd been to Silent Hill, knew it with the certainty of a gambling addict whose luck is always _just_ about to turn - he crushed the cigarette under his heel and extended a hand. Heather seemed harmless enough, but he still approached her with the caution reserved for undetonated warheads as he bent to her slight frame and lifted her up. 

"Come on." He turned in the direction of his apartment and beckoned her to follow. "We need to talk."


	7. Chapter 7

"Drink?" He poured himself a shot from the bottle on the island counter, the apartment's tiny kitchen conveniently close to the door. It had been one of the features he found most attractive about the otherwise mediocre habitation. It was bland in a way that small-town apartments with upper-middle-class aspirations can be; plain grey countertop and white appliances in the kitchen, beige carpet, white walls, brown couch. Soulless. No personality. No history, at least none that had left a mark. That suited him fine.

"No. Hey, can I get a-"

"Fix?" He cut in. She glared. "You've only asked about 500 times in a block and a half." Sighing, he took a tiny sip of whiskey, a warning shot to his stomach (every alcoholic's Achilles heel) then raked a steadied hand back through blond hair that had grown unkempt since winter started to close its jaws. "Relax, kid. Sit."

"I'm 21." She lied. Her birthday - if she even had one, Harry may have just picked a day at random to celebrate the freak accident of her birth - wasn't till the following spring, and even then would bring with it only 20 years, not 21. 

He chuckled. "Yes, alright. You're ancient. Now sit." He turned back to the table where his bottle waited patiently, an amiable friend dressed all in amber gold. 

"Yes daddy." She hissed out between her teeth, the intonation moving past sultry and straight on into petulant. She dropped onto the worn but overstuffed sofa gracelessly, spine curving forward in a sulking slouch, knees together, narrow white shins in their awkward heels pointing to seven and four o'clock, respectively. She scowled at her reflection in the blank dark face of the tv, and kicked the heels off, pushing her toes into the plush of the carpet. Her nails, chipped black polish gleaming dully, picked absently at the nondescript upholstery. The flat was nicer than she'd expected. Plain. Like he didn't really live here, just… existed. Nicer than her place, at any rate. 

He tossed the remaining whiskey back and poured another. It was shaping up to be that kind of night - the kind that looked better reflected in the bottom of a bottle (or two). So, Tuesday. 

Back still to her, he chuckled again. The entire situation was, when viewed objectively, absurdly funny. "Oh, yeah. Father of the Year award, right here." The rim of the shotglass rested against his lower lip for a moment as he studied her, the scent of whiskey just out of reach making his head tilt a little. 

_Well, what the hell. Give her the fix._

He walked past her, into the shadowed maw of the bedroom, and was gone long enough that she'd started to fidget nervously. His name rose to her lips and she drew a breath to call him, but the breath died in a hitching exhale when he reappeared, small black case in his hand. He set it on the coffee table and opened it, and then dropped to one knee before her in a motion more fluid than his years would suggest. Heather was forced to remind herself that she could not be sure of his age - his eyes were centuries older than the rest of him.

"What's that?" She asked, feeling stupid; as the sterile wrapped syringes and other accouterments in the case screamed out their purpose. Her mouth went dry. Her hand reached for the nearest syringe, and he swatted it, pulling the case away. Immediately, her lower lip pulled into a moue of displeasure. "What the hell?"

"This isn't heroin. It's morphine." A hesitation, pulling on latex gloves. "I sold the last of your shit earlier." This last spoken in a growling rumble, the first time he had ever expressed disapproval over her habit, and so vague she could almost dismiss it. Almost. But how incongruous - the hand that offered the poison, now displeased by its effects.

"You didn't wait for me?" A raised eyebrow that was wasted on the top of his golden head as he looked down in concentration on the task at hand. "I can do that myself…" Voice tripping toward alarm as he pulled out a syringe from the sani-wrap and carefully loaded the shot from a glass vial. The bubbles were tapped out, a careful operation during which they both held their breath more out of an instinct for precision than necessity. He held out a hand, demanding her arm, and she jerked back out of his reach. "I can do it!"

"Bullshit." He informed her blandly. "I shouldn't even be _giving_ you this-"

"I can pay!"

"Fuck your money. You know damn well that's not the point. This isn't your usual shit, and your arms look like an ad for NA anyway. Learn how to handle a sharp or fucking snort it, kid."

Her nostrils flared, eyes widening like a mule about to kick. Furious, but unable to contain her longing for the tiny crystalline drop that trembled at the end of the needle, she extended her arm to him - a milky white olive branch, slender and dappled with deep purple bruises. Her arms did look worse than usual. She hadn't been sleeping well, had a difficult time focusing with a loaded gun in her hand. "Fine. Here."

He gripped her wrist, fingers calloused and cool but surprisingly gentle after his snapping words. The needle slid into her flesh with barely a sting, a swirl of red into the barrel of the syringe drawing her eye - a tiny nebula, red storm inside liquid silence. She bit her lip, and he locked eyes with her as he pushed the plunger home. 

The rush was different from dope; smoother, firmer, less demanding, more enticing. Heroin gripped up her supplicants and dragged them along with her, uncaring for the subtler pleasures in the endless cresting wave of her influence. There was no slow burn with the Lady. Morphine crept across her like a suggestion, at first; a prickling wash over her skin, a heat low in her belly, then between her thighs with an intensity so wholly unexpected that she thought the shock must show on her face. She crossed her legs instinctively as he withdrew the needle, and let her head fall back on the cushion behind her.

"Thanks." She murmured softly, breathing already growing shallow. 

His lips pressed into a thin line, the expression unseen, and he closed the case. "Don't mention it." 

The clink of glass called her attention for a moment, as he poured himself another shot, and a brassy snap was explained as the flick of a lighter when a coil of cigarette smoke drifted past her nose a moment later. 

"So. Let's talk."


	8. Chapter 8

But they didn't talk, that night. Heather sprawled out on the sofa, slim legs almost comically white in the gloom of the living room. Her breathing shallow through chapped, parted lips, she looked like a ghost of bliss. His bland entreaties to conversation were met with a petulant moan, the dismissive wave of one willowy hand. "Later." She breathed through parted lips. "I'm too high."

James couldn't begrudge her the oblivion. The girl had the mark of hell on her, and even a moment's respite was a rarity. His eyes traced over the bloom of purple on her arm, a pattern of bruises casually intricate on the tender flesh. Setting aside the shotglass, he picked up the bottle - already considerably lighter - and stalked past her into the bedroom. She shifted slightly as his tall form passed by, casting a shadow over her prone body. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she murmured something that may have been his name, or a curse, or an exultation. His eyes narrowed, heat crawling up his neck and down beneath his belt, and he passed her by without spreading the blanket over her, as he'd briefly considered. Unnecessary kindness always led to problems. Better to leave this one be. 

So much easier said than done, as the darkness of his bedroom swallowed him blind and he drank himself to sleep, painfully aware of the warm body twenty paces away. 

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v

Their symbiotic relationship evolved slowly, then all at once. Waking on his couch the morning after their first awkward liaison, Heather had slipped her heels on and, timidly silent in the face of his drunken slumber, click-clacked her way down the stairs and out the door. Afterwards, meeting in the ambiguous anonymity of the alley seemed pointless. Instead, Heather had invited herself to James' home to purchase her next ticket to Erebus. And installed herself on his couch upon its receipt. The installation had become a permanent thing, her duffle bag of worldly possessions stuffed under the coffee table, her lipstick and off-brand shampoo invading the tiny sanctum of his bathroom. James endured it all with little comment - with the legacy of Silent Hill looming large and unspoken between them, it seemed strangely natural, a kind of fearful symmetry that should have boded only evil but was comfortable and familiar as an old addiction that one just keeps coming back to. 

"Help a girl out, will you?" She'd prodded, holding out her arm in the expectant gesture of a child reaching for a sweet. "You do it better." 

One corner of his lips curved up, a smirk caught on a fishhook. "Do I, now?"

He had yet to offer a pillow or proper blanket, which was probably for the best. A sleeping Heather was a force to be reckoned with. Her body defied any attempt at constraint, kicking off coverings and rebelling against the parallel lines of the couch until she sprawled across it at odd angles, looking like nothing so much as a discarded mannequin. Once he had passed her in the grey half-light of a false dawn, somnambulating his way to the bathroom, and she had been cast over the cushions like a rag doll. The glimmer of smudged eyeshadow, black and silver, on her eyelids gave the impression for a moment that her eyes were open, like doll eyes, wide and empty as glass. Then she caught her breath in that absentminded way all dreamers have, moaned softly, and turned over again. Shuddering, James continued to the bathroom, now much more awake with the metallic taste of wasted adrenaline cloying in the back of his throat. 

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v

"James!" Heather called, dropping keys and a brown paper bag of mismatched offerings on the counter. Opening the bag, she withdrew a bottle of whiskey, a jug of orange juice, a loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter and one of jelly. Pickles, sliced cheese. Heather's cooking skills were negligible, but a fridge empty of sustenance save the obligatory whiskey made her uneasy. She placed all the food in the fridge regardless of perishability. A bag of cat food went under the sink, sustenance for the strays she fed primarily to annoy James. In many ways she was a child still. 

She toed off her canvas sneakers, leaving them in a haphazard shambles in front of the door before padding into the living room. Her movements, which gave the illusion of grace onstage, were in actuality quite gawky, fragile limbs grown too thin too quickly, the last straggling growth spurt of her late teens struggling to push her over 5'2" and into that select group of human beings able to reach groceries on the top shelf. The general store kept the pop tarts up there. 

"James!" She called again, and set a sweating tumbler full of whiskey, ice and orange juice on the coffee table. "Breakfast." She reclined back on the sofa, feeling no compunction about stretching out across its entire breadth and stealing the throw blanket. A few moments later, James shuffled past, hair tousled and eyes bleary, straw-colored stubble lining his jaw. He picked up the glass on his way by and raised it to his lips, clearing the taste of last night's patented overindulgence.

"Morning, sunshine." She cracked, and stretched out a hand. He dropped a tiny beige square, just one, into her waiting palm.

"Breakfast." He replied, and she sat up, clutching her prize. 

"Just one?" She groused, calling to him as water ran in the bathroom. Turning it over, she inspected the offering more closely. "Suboxone? You're fucking kidding. Come on Sunderland, this won't even get my ass off the ground."

He reemerged, still unshaven but looking at least marginally less rumpled. "You'll get it later. You need your wits about you today, kid. We're going out." 

She toyed absently with a pair of bottlecaps, flipping one into an empty glass and attempting to repeat the trick with the other. Heather was not a fan of idle hands, not this early in the day at least. When heroin abdicated, anxiety reigned in its stead. "Where to?" She peeled the protective seal from the small patch, eyeing it like a traitor, before reaching over her shoulder and pressing it with one thin hand against her skin. The act seemed pointless, an empty ritual, nothing like the rush and tumble of heroin. She turned her gaze to James, intending to rephrase her question a little more harshly in light of her newfound ire. 

Only then did she notice the mad glint in his eye, the slightly desperate coil of tension in his frame, as if he were a caricature of James penned in harsh lines by a hasty artist. 

"James," she murmured softly, "Don't."

If he said it, it would make it real, that invisible yawning terror that stretched between them like a recurring nightmare, a shared hallucination. _Don't say it._

And the morning had started out so well.

"We're leaving Brahms."


	9. Chapter 9

When Heather had been Cheryl, six years old and smiling, she had choked on a piece of ice floating half submerged in a plastic cup of watery cola. That feeling resurfaced now, though the lump of ice was much larger. She laughed nervously, wandering into the kitchen and beginning the ritual summoning of coffee. She'd forgotten filters, so tucked a folded paper napkin from the local Chinese place beneath the grounds instead. "Come on James," she laughed nervously, plugging in the pot. "Lighten up."

He raked a hand through his hair, forcing it to remain steady as he quelled nausea that could have been a side effect of breakfast or nothing at all. He drained his glass and deposited it in the square steel sink, forcing himself to speak with his back to her - as if by avoiding her eyes he could ignore the terror slowly rising in her, magma up the shaft of a manic volcano.

"We have to try." He said quietly, a hiss from the coffeepot punctuating his sentence. 

_You know we can't._ She dug her heels in, a mule again, balking at unfamiliar territory. Her back to his, her lower lip stuck out and refused to tremble as she retrieved (with some slight difficulty even on the bottom shelf) two mugs from the cabinet above her. "I don't want to." The lie was sweet, comforting; filled her with an insubstantial righteousness. Better than the truth. _We can't._

"We'll just try." He insisted, channeling a bit of Heather's inner mule. 

The mugs hit the counter with a decisive slam. She spun around, as he turned to face her with less furious energy, and slammed her palms into his chest. "Sure!" She chirped, gazing into unrelenting blue eyes as her own welled with tears. A great false grin split her face, a white scar, bloodless lips, grotesque in its desperation. "Of course! Whatever you say, mon capitaine." 

He gripped her wrists in his, hands loose around the slender bird-bones. "Relax. Relax. We'll do it together. The worst that can happen is… it doesn't work out." The words were lame, limping past his tongue and lying dead in the air between them like roadkill. The himself he had once been, awkward and earnest, looked back at him from the scrying mirror of her eyes; pale and distorted as a drowned corpse. 

_The worst that can happen._ Thus did fools and heroes die.

"Fine." She murmured. "Fine, James. I'm going to smoke a cigarette." She broke free of his grip, snatching a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table as if it had personally wronged her. He followed her onto the fire escape a few minutes later, accepting the stub of the cigarette in return for a chipped mug of black coffee. 

"Is there anything else?" She asked dully, not really expecting an answer. _Father, if it be Thy will, take this cup from me._

Mutely, he shook his head, and drank his own coffee. It tasted bitter, metallic and oily. The taste of rust and blood.


	10. Chapter 10

The sun never seemed to shine in Brahms, not really. On occasion, it would peek out of the solid grey cloud cover just long enough to glint glaringly off of a broken bottle or the carelessly tilted side mirror on a 1987 Plymouth Reliant parked outside a tv repair shop. A series of minute annoyances to break up the endless monotony. Hell in small doses. 

The bus tickets grew creased and sweaty in their hands as they stood in the abandoned depot, knapsacks full of a few belongings prized more than the others dropped carelessly to the concrete at their feet. A half hour ticked by past the appointed time, then another, and the temperature dropped another five degrees as the bleary sun moved closer to the horizon. 

_Did you think it would be this simple?_

"Fuck." James spat, a cigarette butt sailing across the depot to land, smoldering, beside a bank of grey-stained, stubborn snow. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Heather demanded, as they rounded the depot. It was as much an immediate question as an existential quandary. 

She got her answer in shards of glass a moment later, as James picked up a lead pipe from the gutter and smashed the driver's side window of an ancient International Harvester. Covering his fist with the cuff of his sleeve, he cleared the broken glass from the window's frame and bench seat of the truck, leaning across to unlock the passenger door before installing himself in the driver's seat. "Get in."

"What the fuck?" Her voice was shrill, no longer able to ignore the urgency of the situation and panicking with the full knowledge of it.

"Just get the fuck in, Heather!" He snarled, ripping the panel beneath the steering column out with a shower of dust and fiberglass. He dug out his keys, using the sharp end of a bottle-opener keychain to strip the necessary wires. For a long moment he thought the damn thing would refuse to turn over anyway, just another hideous coincidence in this entire hideous existence… And then the engine roared to life, and he brought his fist down on the steering wheel in triumph. The rusted old hulk pulled out onto the main road, and he threw it into gear, pushing it for speed - which in this case resulted in around fifty-five miles per hour, regardless. Still, they were moving, eating up the tree-lined, foggy yards between themselves and the town line. 

Heather felt a strange sort of exhilaration, a knotting in the pit of her stomach that told her to soar with joy while at the same time warning her to not get her hopes up. Her thin fingers, cuticles bitten and ragged, twisted the strap of her duffel bag in mounting anxiety. There was no way it could be this easy. The fact that she considered grand theft auto "easy" was only a testament to what a miserably desperate joke their lives had become. 

Brahms was not, and presumably still is not, hospitable to stray dogs. Certainly there was a mangy specimen or two, prowling about in the city's back alleys and ransacking garbage pails willy-nilly. But by and large they avoided the place… Perhaps it was the wafting scent of brimstone and doom drifting on the wind from Silent Hill, but more likely it was that the residents of Brahms, like the land itself, were mean and stingy. It was a bitter, rotten place; tightfisted and hard as flint. 

And yet, wonder of wonders, here was a dog. It darted across the road from a stand of cedars on the left, coat a dull rusty red and grey, its bony frame long and low, like a jackal's. James swore and threw the steering wheel hard to the right, but the old truck had been going faster than it had in years and the roads were slick. Bald tires screamed against asphalt, the acrid scent of hot rubber on frosty road filling the air even inside the cab. Both passenger-side wheels halted in the deep ditch on the shoulder of the road, but the truck's momentum continued to carry it, and with a clanking groan it began to roll. Heather screamed, throwing herself across the bench seat into James' lap, but it was not enough. The truck tipped over onto its side, passenger side door pinned against the needle-strewn dirt, driver's side window pointed towards a sky white and arcing like a great blind eyeball. 

Muttering a steady stream of curses, scrambling around in the cab which had suddenly lost all respect for gravity and perspective, James managed to get both hands on the frame of the driver's side window. He hauled himself out, earning himself a cut across his right palm in the process, then reached in and grabbed the back of Heather's sweatshirt, dragging her up as well. The girl was sobbing, babbling incoherencies that he suspected he would agree with if he could make them out. 

"She won't let us, she won't let us go, she won't…"

When they were a hundred yards down the road or so, the truck's engine block exploded. James crouched at the sound, pulling Heather's small frame down in front of him. When the concussive sound had stopped ringing in his ears, he glanced back over his shoulder. Through the smoke and crackling orange flames, he could see the dog, watching them.

"Let's go." He said to Heather, pulling her up. "Back to town. Quickly."


	11. Chapter 11

"Ow," Heather hissed, wincing. She held a cloth full of ice up to the swelling bruise on her forehead, a souvenir of their ill-fated joyride in someone else's truck. "James, I need my shit."

"Not now, Heather, fuck!" James swore at her, pacing as if about to jump out of his skin. They had scrambled inside as if the demons of hell were after them, which indeed it seemed they were, though no visible denizens had made themselves known. The Brahms locals, those they had seen as they ran-staggered back into town, seemed supremely unconcerned with their plight or even with the missing pickup. It was like living amongst melancholic sleepwalkers. Safely behind a locked door, the apartment seemed suffocating.

"James, please." At the tremble in her voice, he turned. Her eyes were bright with tears though she struggled bravely to keep them from welling over. "Load me up a shot. It really hurts."

 _For fuck's sake she's just been in a car accident you miserable asshole,_ he snarled at himself, and immediately stopped his pacing and went to retrieve the black case. 

Heather extended her arm, fingertips curling into a loose fist, her blue-grey veins visible like roots above ground. James tapped her skin gently, unnecessarily, the gesture only there to stretch out the silence, counting his heartbeats as he filled the syringe. The pinch, tiny dagger in snow white flesh, eluded Heather entirely - she was too full of the throbbing in her head, waiting to hurl herself over the precipice of pain into oblivion.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, not sure what he was apologizing for, pressing the plunger home and withdrawing the needle. A tiny drop of blood welled in the needle's wake, spidering in minute patterns across the fragile skin of her arm, and he swiped it away with a tissue, then rose to his feet. 

Heather peered up at him, pupils already beginning to contract as if she stared into the sun. She reached for his hand and he gave it, assuming she needed help getting up. Chivalry slew him, because she pulled him down, instead.

Her body shifted to welcome him as if she had planned it, and so he knew immediately that she had. "Fuck, Heather," he muttered, as she rubbed her cheek over his neck, making no attempts to hide the satisfaction with which she inhaled his scent. James moved to rise, but she twined herself around him with an unexpected tenacity. Her teeth found his ear and she rolled her hips up into his, and he groaned. "Fuck, what are you doing?"

"I want you." She murmured, breath hot and moist against the cool shell of his ear. Her voice was low, slurred like a sleepwalker but perfectly clear. She rocked her hips into him again, and he knew she could feel that he was hard. 

He swallowed. "No you don't." With a herculean effort, he rose to his feet before she could protest, taking a step back and out of reach. "You're too high, Heather. Sleep it off."

"James-" she pouted, stretching toward him. He stepped back again.

"No." Turning, he fled, and locked himself in his bedroom.

Heather was overwhelmed; a violent storm of adrenaline, antagonism and clear abandon racing through her veins. She was compelled, a puppet on strings, her skin screaming for touch with an imperative that was sinister in its intensity. James had refused her, but she tried, nonetheless, to quiet the ache.

James smoked a cigarette in the dark, clutching his bottle, his only friend in all the world. She could have gone out, he supposed. He had expected to hear high heels clicking angrily down the fire escape; girl on fire gone to burn her high off elsewhere. After seeing her sets at the Jukebox (the old bar's pretentiously amiable new name), most any man in Brahms wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers. But she didn't go out. 

What she did, instead, was lie on his couch and give herself the attention he'd denied her. Audibly. He heard his name a few times, his cock throbbing in response, and he gritted his teeth, biting down on the taste of whiskey and bad choices just barely out of reach. He drank himself into a literal blackout, trading temptation for a healthy dose of alcohol poisoning. 

There is a state, post-blackout, pre-hangover; an uneasy anxiety in the grey hours of dawn when hard liquor shivers its way out of the system with cold sweats and cramping guts. It was this state to which James was condemned, minutes before sunrise stretching longer and longer till an aching bladder and sour stomach forced him to his feet. He opened the bedroom door, tiptoeing past Heather's sleeping form, huddled small and still - unusually quiet beneath the throw blanket. After making himself into something resembling a human being in the small, dimly lit bathroom, he stepped back into the living room and was surprised to see Heather sitting up. 

"James," she murmured quietly. "I think something's wrong." She held out her hand, fingers trembling visibly. She looked at him, pupils still pinpricks in the darkness of her eyes. He could barely see them in the twilit room, but the pallor of her skin nearly glowed. 

How carefully had he measured the dosage?

"Shit!" He muttered, and went to her side, sitting beside her on the couch and taking her face in his hands, turning her gaze towards him. He palpated her throat gently, found her pulse, counted the beats. Tried to ignore the sound of her voice echoing in his pounding head. He tilted her jaw so her eyes faced the open window, watching her pupils for a sign of response. "Do you feel sick?"

"No, I…"

"I don't think it's an overdose." James said, clearly nonplused. "What's wrong?"

She rubbed cool hands on her thighs, gooseflesh raising on her skin though she could barely feel it. Even the hair on the back of her neck prickled. "Look out the window."

James frowned, but turned to face the small window over the kitchen sink. He took a single step forward and hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at her. "What is it?" His heart was in his throat, the words coming out thick and hollow. 

"Just look!" Her tone was accusing, and something else - she wrapped her arms around herself, biting her lip, opium eyes wide and black. 

He looked, fingertips twitching back the curtain like ripping off a bandaid. Outside, the silent world was covered in a thick, amorphous grey fog, ashes falling like rain.


	12. Chapter 12

The faucet had developed a drip the week before. In the quiet of the apartment it echoed like a storm, a cascade, each drop an individual deluge. The silence stretched in the long seconds between them like an overwrought violin string. Finally Heather spoke. Her voice was dead, hollow; completely devoid of emotion, as if she had expected this all along. "We have to go back. She won't let us do anything else."

James said nothing, merely stared out into the nightmare that had followed him home, and wondered if it was too late to consider suicide as a viable option.

The long, narrow street was a grotesque caricature of the yellow brick road, stretching away into grey blankness, a grainy soup of fog and smoke. The air was still, but bitingly cold, their ears numb and lashes heavy beneath ash that fell like snow. Heather reached out blindly for his hand and he took it, dry but hot like a furnace between his fingers. The world was eerily hushed, a threatening and all-too-familiar emptiness having crashed over Brahms and swallowed them in its wake. The silence muffled thoughts like cotton as they walked the path to Silent Hill. 

Small towns in Appalachia are nestled between the mountains like shameful secrets, gray smudges against monoliths of green and brown. They are hidden even from each other, isolated and hushed. On an average day, visibility normal beneath a bright bleak sky, it would have taken just under an hour to drive from Brahams to Silent Hill. Walking the footpath Alessa had chosen for them, afoot and nearly blind in ash and fog, it was even less. Warning bells rang in his skull and hammered about in his chest - _Time has no meaning here._

Heather's hand tightened in his as shadows writhed on the edges of their vision and slowly closed in. Monstrous shapes, fascinating in their grotesquery, lurched and shuddered into the road before them, and stopped. James could hear only the blood in his ears, rushing like ocean surf. Heather listened in horror to the sloppy, grating sounds of the miserable abominations; hearing a long, low moan like a sleeper in terror. It took more than a moment for her to realize the sound came from her own white lips. 

James stared at the creatures as they leered and dipped before them, not approaching, and realized with a fresh wave of repulsion that they were bowing. As if hearing the realization in his mind, the shapes turned; indiscernible faces heading off toward the town, clearly leading. _Welcoming._ Though muscle and bone screamed against it, the two felt compelled to follow. 

Crossing into the town was hideously like coming home. Blanketed in dissolute grey softness, everything was the rusty brown of old blood or the dingy yellow of old piss and ugly memories. They passed a carcass, some unfortunate dredge of hell torn apart by more of the same, and Heather swallowed the whimper that rose in her throat and threatened to become a hysterical scream. There was no cause for silence, except that something about the town did and always had demanded it. _Compulsion._ James thought again. Just another compulsive behavior. He wanted to laugh, shrill and on the razor's edge of madness. He didn't. 

The street opened up before a tall gaunt cathedral, an old man bent in judgment over two ignominious sinners. Austere and gothic, forbidding spikes disappeared into the swirling blank sky. The monsters flanked the church steps, marking entry as the clear option. To James' dull shock, Heather wrenched her hand from his, dashing not back, in fear, but forward. Her hand shook, knees knocking together in the kind of fright one only reads about in ghost fables. But she rested her palm on the cold iron knocker, and looked over her shoulder at him "Too late now," she said, in that offhand manner she had of inadvertently answering his thoughts. "Let's go."

The entranceway was nondescript, alarmingly normal as the rest of the town. The door creaked open, no more or less ominous than any neglected hinge that has seen much use, and they stepped into the cathedral's interior. It was dark, motes of ash and dust dancing lazily in watery grey light filtering through high windows. It took their eyes a moment to adjust, but neither was particularly surprised to see who awaited them in the shadows. 

Heather had seen her only in a mirror, wearing her blue pinafore dress that had been a present for the first day of school. She recognized every detail - the dark hair, fair skin, large dark eyes - and yet every inch of her was different. 

James had never seen her at all, but the presence called out to him all the same, commanding his attention with the dogged single-mindedness that had characterized his last visit to the town. He felt control slipping through his fingers like sand, panic turning his guts to water. 

"Finally," Alessa greeted, voice condescending in a childish treble. "I've been expecting you."


	13. Chapter 13

She was smaller, smaller than he could have anticipated, a petite little thing in a blue pinafore stained with the charcoal grey of wet ash and a dark rust color that turned his guts liquid. Her hair hung in ratty tangles, smudges decorating her ghost-pale face, and she looked for all the world like a singed, bedraggled kitten. A drowned kitten, that had been buried in Pet Semetary.

Heather seemed torn, taking a half step closer to him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, a trembling hand almost reaching out to touch the apparition that looked so much like the vengeful ghost of her childhood. Looking at Alessa was like looking into a mirror during a nightmare; a sort of horrible self-awareness that clung to her with the sticky and shuddering insistence of blood.

He had seen horrors. Death, twisted shrieking abominations; things that would leave any man cringing and drinking and wretched as he was. He had felt fear, crawling up his spine like the cold, slimy finger of a corpse. But standing in the presence of this child, a mere waif, death had never seemed so close.

"I'm glad you could make it," the demon went on, childish body she inhabited gesturing magnanimously to the ruined pews. "Take a seat."

Heather said nothing, only stared - the way her eyes bulged slightly, unfocused, shallow breaths passing through parted lips, made James suspect she was going into shock. He couldn't blame her. This shattered reality was one she had hoped never to return to, and he had dragged her willfully back into it.

Alessa laughed softly, as if hearing his thoughts, swinging one foot at the ankle in a childish gesture of pleasure and satisfaction.

James straightened his spine, a brief and rare show of will from a man so thoroughly broken. "I'll stand."

Alessa turned her gaze on him, and the dark gaze - so like its twin, in Heather's eyes, that had so entranced him - pinned him down. Her expression was blank, almost questioning, a little girl bemused by the unexpected. All at once, he became aware of a pressure on his shoulders, the back of his neck, bending his head to the floor in a subservient bow. His legs buckled beneath him as if pulled by puppet strings, and he fell to his knees on the cold marble. A voice in the back of his mind, nastily sibilant, disturbingly eager, whispered the word - _"Mistress."_

"Just can't keep that darkness in, can you James?" Alessa chirped, and the amusement in her voice was perversely adult. She flicked her eyes to Heather, tilting her head as if in conspiracy with her contemporary. "He has a sickness. You've seen."

Heather swallowed, looking down, askance, anywhere but into the dark orbs that gazed at her steadily. Alessa only laughed, shrugging dismissively. Heather would face her eventually - she had little choice in the matter. None of them did, when destiny called.

"So serious, Heather. You act as if I'd brought you here to kill you."

"Didn't you?" James' voice was a hoarse rasp, but he managed the words nonetheless.

Alessa had the grace to not feign affront, small lips curving in a smirk. "No. I have a higher purpose for you both." She turned her eyes on Heather, expression nakedly covetous. "I have need of that which was stolen from me. The form, healthy and hale, which _you_ inherited."

"Why?" The question was barely a croak, Heather's lips parting in an uncertain tremble. "What could you possibly want from me that you haven't already taken?"

Alessa hissed like a snake, drawing herself up - the effect would have looked vaguely absurd, if not for the shadows rearing behind her. "I have given you everything, sister-child. Your freedom, your youth; the last bit of goodness in Silent Hill." She lowered her voice, eyes narrowing to an onyx glint. "Now, I'm taking it back."

Heather laid a hand over her heart, too heavy with dread even to reply. She looked like the sacrifice in an antique lithograph, a young witch preparing to be burned at the stake.

Alessa smirked again, raising her white hands and dropping them in the manner of a child excusing a quarrel. "No matter. I don't intend to kill you. You are my only surviving link to the world beyond. But I need what you offer. And him as well." She jerked her chin towards James, who had climbed laboriously to his feet and now leaned against a pew, a lock of dirty blond hair obscuring wary eyes, a faint sheen of sweat from the effort of resistance leaving a dark streak of ash on one cheekbone.

"And what is that?" He ground out warily.

"Life," Alessa answered simply, a shrug raising thin shoulders. The answer was given easily, as if it had no weight, but James felt a creeping unease settle over him like lead.

"Only that," Heather laughed, hysteria shot through her tone like the ugly crimson threads of blood poisoning. Suddenly she felt a hundred years old. "Speak plainly, Alessa." The words came to her in her own voice, but they were not truly her own. Perhaps the manner of speaking to demons was written into her genetic code.

"A child," Alessa snapped. "I require a child, a pure being with a purity of purpose. I will inhabit your body, as it is the only fitting vessel for me. And together we will create a child. With him."

James gaped, vision blurring for a moment as the leaden discontent solidified into a frigid ball of terror low in his belly. Fire raced up his neck, turning his face and fingertips numb as the world swayed. He gripped the splintered wood of the pew tighter to remain upright. The wood, punished beneath fingers tight as death, creaked ominously.

Alessa turned her gaze to him, as if noticing him for the first time. There was something of the reptile in her countenance, a predatory unconcern with anything but the immediate; simultaneously primitive and ageless.

"I'm not going to force you, James." The look she gave him was almost affectionate - for a split second, reality shifting like sheets of shale sliding from a mountainside, she was a disheveled schoolgirl with a crush. "I'm not a monster." She said it almost sweetly, in that patient treble, and he could feel the hysterical laugh writhing its way up his throat and choking him, because he knew that with a look she could force him to gouge his own eyes out. There was power here, power he had yielded to, power that had shaped him - and he was hers until she decided she was done with him.

Death seemed suddenly very far away.

And through it all the awareness of Heather beside him, between them, faded blue eyes flickering from the demon before him to trace the curve of her back or slight dip beneath her clavicle, want of her throbbing in his fingertips and making his mouth dry as if desperate for a drink. Like black magic alive beneath his skin; it was twisted, absurd... He had never wanted anything so much. A sentient thing, the will of the place and that of its mistress weighed on him like irons, playing on his own weakness and dragging him down into darkness.

"You want her." Alessa said dryly. "I can feel it. Good. Sometimes fate is kind to me."

"A child," Heather muttered, her voice high and almost singsong in a way that made James fear her mind might be broken. "Only that."

"Yes," Alessa agreed, seeming darkly pleased that the girl showed signs of compliance. "Only that."


End file.
